September Update Post

I’m thinking that attending back to back giant megacons isn’t the wisest thing I’ve ever done. I had DragonCon last week, got home Tuesday, and Thursday I was at Salt Lake City FanX. Cons are fun but mentally tiring for writers, because we’ve got to be switched on the entire time we’re talking to fans. So that was like two weeks of nonstop talking. So yesterday I did nothing but sit on the couch playing Rome: Total War (a classic, and it’s on iPad now!).

So here is what is going on:

Book Stuff

Target Rich Environment came out last Tuesday and as far as I can tell is doing extremely well. It hit #1 in anthologies on Amazon.

The book store I was signing at had a couple cases of them at SLC, but sold out the first hour, so the next day I brought in my personal stash of comp copies and cleaned out the B&Ns between my house and the con on the way there to consign. (I hate when fans come a long way to see me and leave empty handed). Those all sold out too.

But then I found that they had me scheduled to sign at a different booth that was there, which had more TRE (after I’d spent hours telling people I was sold out) So if you saw the update photos on Facebook this weekend, that’s what that was all about.

If you’ve not checked out Target Rich Environment yet, you should. I’m really proud of it.

My next release is the sequel to Son of the Black Sword, called House of Assassins, which will be out in February. It is bad ass. In fact, Jim Minz has been my editor on a bunch of my books, and he told me he thinks it’s the best thing I’ve ever written.

I approved the final copy edits a couple weeks ago, so we should be seeing an eARC for HoA soon I assume. Otherwise, the regular release will be in February.

I’m currently working on Monster Hunter Guardian. I got back Sarah’s edits before I left for Dragon and started on the final pass. This is a Julie Shackleford novel that takes place at the same time as Monster Hunter Siege. I’ve been planning this collaboration with Sarah Hoyt for about five or six years now.

But Guardian should be done and turned into Baen, hopefully by the end of the month. I’m not sure but I believe they are planning on an August(?) 2019 release. Toni unveiled the cover art at the Baen roadshow at DragonCon (It is awesome).

I’m also one of the editors of Noir Fatale, along with KC Ezell. It’s a collection of noir sci-fi and fantasy stories from a bunch of really awesome authors. We’ve got all the stories in (they’re really good), KC just wrote her intro and kicked it back over to me to write mine. Noir Fatale will be released by Baen in a October 2019 (I think).

I was 35,000 words in working on the third book in the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior (it goes Son of the Black Sword, House of Assassins, Destroyer of Worlds) when I got back Guardian form Sarah. So once I send off Guardian and Noir Fatale to Baen, I’ll be back to working on that next.

Oh wait, I also owe Mike Williamson another Freehold story before October. Gotta squeeze that in there.

There is gong to be another volume of Target Rich Environment. Right now I’m just trying to nail down which of my stories I’m able to reprint at this time.

There will be another Monster Hunter Files, but I need to talk to the authors I’ve picked to coordinate a bit, because this one is going to be five novella sized stories, and they’re going to be linked events.

There are lots more novels planned, so if I didn’t list it here, don’t worry, it is still in the works. Including more MHI, and another trilogy of Grimnoir novels (my story in Noir Fatale is specifically about one of the characters in the next trilogy).

And finally, last week I signed another contract for a 3rd Tom Stranger with Audible. This time it is going to be another Tom novella, plus two short stories. One of which is tentatively titled Dick move, space fish, which tells the story of Jimmy the Intern giving Stranger & Stranger’s new employee orientation to a dolphin. Yes. I have a weird job.

Con and Event Schedule

My summer had LibertyCon, GenCon, DragonCon, and Salt Lake FanX, but I do believe that I am all done for the year.

I believe my next event is LTUE, which isn’t until February.

I’ve been drafted to teach another master class workshop at Fyrecon again.

Yard Moose Mountain Update

Building a house is a stressful pain in the ass. But after two years of infrastructure and paperwork to develop this thing, it is finally starting to look sorta house shaped.

We’ve got basement walls, basement plumbing, and they were doing the backfill yesterday. I should have slab poured on Friday. Now it is just a race between us and the weather.

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36 thoughts on “September Update Post”

It seemed like my wife and I, me pushing her in her wheel chair and her sitting prettily in said wheel chair, were stalking you and I swear that wasn’t intentional. Thanks for being nice as hell and talking to all of us. And thanks for signing when you didn’t even have to.

I had this great reply, pretty much saying “take a vacation, you deserve it!”, but also included some rather selfish wishes in an attempt to meet you since I don’t do conventions other than Origins, and we know how that went.

But it was borderline creepy as well.

And then the website crapped out and it wouldn’t post, and now I forgot what I wrote.

So when you and Sarah collaborate, how do you split up your tasks? Do you each take a group of different characters and run interactions & dialog between them, or does one of you set up the scene and the other fill in the details? And how do you plot the whole thing?

That’s a bit unfortunate, I miss Cleasby and Acosta. Not that I’m complaining, of course; we’re not exactly starved for other tales. Thank you for clarifying.

Besides, it sounds like another Malcontents entry would be years out anyway, what with work on four other series, various collaborations, short story collections, showing the flag at cons, various mystery projects, building a mountaintop fortress, and raising a family all competing for attention.

Couldn’t Audible publish separate recordings of the short stories that don’t already have audio versions, the way they did with Tokyo Raider? At least for the MHI ones, I feel like that would make sense. But it’s their business, not mine, so whatever.

There’s ways to get parts of TRE on Audible.
1. Tom Stranger started out as an Audible Exclusive.
2-3. The 3 Grimnoir shorts are available from Audible (And the two that are sequels were Audible exclusives originally). Two are in this volume, the third likely will be in the next one.
4. Destiny of a Bullet was in the Warmachine book “Called to Battle, vol. 1” which is on Audible.
5. The Great Sea Monster is in Kaiju Rising, Volume 1.
6. Force Multiplier is in “V-Wars: Blood and Fire” by Maberry (note that Audible has Maberry as author, not editor, nor does it indicate that it’s an anthology with other authors unless you read the cover). Also note that the TRE e-book has that anthology listed as “V-Wars: Blood and Wars” (sic) in the intro to the story.

That’s 6/14 parts of the book available currently in Audible, from FOUR different publishers.
Of the remaining 8, 3 are by yet more publishers (one from a book that started as a kickstarter, as did KR), 1 is totally new, and the remaining 4 are from Baen (either from the free fiction on their web page (2), or from other anthologies that didn’t have audiobooks(the other 2)).

With 7 different original publishers pre-anthology, it’s not surprising that there would be difficulty.

Perhaps after TRE2, Audible can be persuaded into doing a package that includes all the stories from the two books that don’t have audible versions, and maybe a larger pack with the other stories included.

Just picked up TRE today at Barnes & Noble, looking forward to cracking it. Also grabbed John Ringo’s “A Hymn Before Battle”…never read him before but I figure since you guys’ names appear together often he must be ok 🙂

Just a third of the way through and needing to pace myself to keep from woofing the whole thing down in one sitting. Enjoying it a lot, thanks for the stories. Probably will wind up woofing it down whole while squatting in the dark as Florence makes a visit tonight though. Also still think TRE has Best Cover Art EVERRRR!. lol

Read TRE and the Grimnoir shorts really captured my attention…I hadn’t really intended to read the series but thanks to the shorts, I wanted more. I bought all three and have been working my way through them. They are really fun and that seems like an awesome universe. They made for great reading on my TDY…